As I stand there, panting, the glass bottle still raised above my head, I think of everything I could have lost in that moment: my successful life in Vegas, a life of professional and material satisfaction, of clever friends, expensive clothes, fine dining. And suddenly it doesn’t seem so much.
Could it be that Jody and Abe, in this shabby little apartment in this grubby city, had something more than me?
When I’ve recovered enough to move, I climb over the bed and wobble to the door. The room beyond is silent, the shadows still. I make my way past the kitchen, turning on the lights as I go, and check the bathroom – empty – then the hallway. Abe’s pea coat hangs on the back of the chair. I check the pockets and frown. The wallet has been replaced. I check the front door: closed firmly. No signs of forced entry. Did he have a skeleton key?
Then it occurs to me.
The building manager. José Ribeira.
He offered to get keys cut for me so he must have a master set. I couldn’t understand what the guy shouted as he jumped up from the bed – could it have been Portuguese?
I call the police but, even though I’m alone in the house and whoever it was clearly had a key, they won’t come over until the morning. When I protest that I may well be in imminent danger they say that it’s unlikely that the person will return, but if I’m worried perhaps I could spend the rest of the night with a friend or neighbour.
I’m tempted to tell them where to stick their advice, but it’s not a good idea to get on the wrong side of the British police, so I thank them and hang up.
The sofa legs make a horrible screeching noise that must echo through the whole church as I drag it across the floor and force it through the hall door, grunting with effort. It’s almost the same width as the corridor and once I’ve wedged it up against the wall at the end, the door won’t open more than a centimetre. Afterwards I sit at the table, huddled under Abe’s blanket drinking strong coffee, until the flat light of dawn filters through the stained glass.
But as the tumbler’s translucent shadow stretches across the table, I notice something strange.
The white flowers are gone.
13. Jody
I can’t sleep. Why is she asking all these questions? Is she trying to catch me out? Are the police in on it too? Will she tell them everything I said? They always wanted to punish me for what happened before.
No no no no no no no no.
Nothing happened before.
Don’t think about it.
Think about us.
Our first kiss.
Do you remember?
I’ve never been much of a cook. At Abbott’s Manor all the meals were prepared for you, and in the bedsit I didn’t even have a microwave. Besides ready meals, the only things I can really do are Spanish omelettes, which I learned from Jeanie, and lemon drizzle cake, which Helen taught me. But that evening, because my appetite had been so good, I decided to cook myself a treat – sausages and mash. I bought the mash ready-made in a plastic dish to microwave, but when it came to the sausages I decided to grill them. The pack said to prick them to let the fat out but I didn’t want it going all over the grill pan, which is hard to clean as the bottom is all black and lumpy, so I put some foil down on the metal rungs, then closed the door and went to read my book for ten minutes, which is how long the packet said to leave them before turning them over.
I’d finished the new book and gone back to one I’d read two or three times before. It was one of those perfect ones you can’t put down. The heroine filled with fears and insecurities. Not loads of sex. The path to love strewn with difficulty so that at the end, when they finally get together, you feel like your heart will burst out of your chest and fly up into the sky.
I was so engrossed it took me ages to realise something was wrong. The battery in my smoke alarm’s dead, so when the landing one started going off I didn’t realise it was anything to do with me. Then I saw the black smoke pouring out of the oven.
I know now what happened. Because the fat couldn’t drain away into the bottom of the grill pan, it was too close to the heat and in the end it just caught fire.
The oven door was so hot I burned my hand trying to open it.
You must have heard my scream because a minute later you were banging on my door, asking if I was all right. I was in so much pain I could barely speak. When I didn’t reply you started throwing yourself at the door, trying to break it down. That’s why the lock’s still broken now. I managed to tell you to stop and hobbled over to let you in, still clutching my hand, which had started to blister.
You burst in, wild-eyed. ‘What’s happened?’
You must have seen the flames licking from the oven, but you seemed more concerned with my hand. Pulling me to the sink, you turned on the cold tap and held my palm under the flow.
‘Hold it there,’ you said sternly.
Now you went to the oven. The flames were licking almost to the ceiling and in a minute the polystyrene tiles would start to melt. Using the oven glove you managed to pull the grill pan out onto the open door, but the fire didn’t go out.
‘Tea towel?’ you shouted.
‘I’ll get one.’
‘No! Keep your hand under the tap.’ Then you started taking off your shirt. ‘Wet this for me!’ You tossed it to me and I caught the manly scent of fresh perspiration and your flowery deodorant that I liked so much.
I did as I was told.
Grabbing the wet shirt back you threw it over the grill pan and the flames went out at once. You went to the window and opened it, and the air started to clear. Then the smoke alarm stopped, its last ring echoing down through the stairwell.
We looked at each other and then we both laughed.
‘Well, that was exciting,’ you said.
‘I’m so sorry. You’ve ruined your shirt.’
‘Shirts are two a penny. Hands aren’t. Let me see.’ You came over to the sink, where the water still gushed over my palm. It was the right thing to do. The redness was already going down.
‘I’ve got a burn spray in my flat.’
But you didn’t move.
I tried not to look down at your bare chest. There was a tiny speck of soot in one of the narrow shadows made by your ribcage. I couldn’t help myself. I licked my finger and wiped it away. I could feel your eyes on mine, your breathing slow and deep. My own heart was beating like a humming bird’s wings.
I tried to keep my voice steady, to talk about something mundane.
‘Do you think I should tell José?’
‘There’s been no damage, so only if you want to.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I said.
And then I kissed you.
14. Mags
First thing in the morning I call Peter Selby’s office and arrange to have the locks changed.
It’s gone half past ten when a bored and very young-looking PC arrives to take my statement. She doesn’t dust for fingerprints or footprints and doesn’t even bother to write down the fact that the flowers are missing.
‘So, that’s it, then?’ I say as she gets up to leave. ‘You’re not actually going to do anything, are you?’
‘As nothing was actually taken …’
‘Except the flowers.’
‘… you weren’t assaulted, and you’ve arranged to have the locks changed, we can hope this was an isolated incident. Make sure your door is secure at night, and call us if you experience any more trouble. We’ll let you know if we get any leads.’
‘Course you will.’
She’s too thick or uninterested to pick up on the sarcasm.
Half an hour later there is a knock at my door. A Brazilian guy with neck tattoos introduces himself as José Ribeira. He’s wiry and muscular around the shoulders but, I think, shorter than the intruder, plus he smells very pungently of aftershave, which the intruder didn’t.
I talk him through what happened and he purses his shapely lips and says I must have been very frightened. When I say not particularly, he gi
ves a gold-incisored grin and says he likes a girl with cahoonas. Despite the weather he is wearing a baggy vest, which shows off his sleek black armpit hair and ripped lats. He reminds me of the pimps that patrol the Strip back home, which makes me like him.
He waits with me until the locksmiths arrive, drinking black coffee and telling me about his cousin who lives in Sacramento, then he gives me his number and makes me promise to call if I ever need anything.
The locksmiths leave me two sets of keys. Apparently this is standard for every flat in the block. It occurs to me that, since I’ve got Jody’s set, and I haven’t found any others in the flat, someone else has a set of my brother’s keys. I suppose it doesn’t matter now that the locks have been changed.
I wonder if Jody’s heard the men working. If so, she should have got them to fix her door too. Maybe I should have asked her. I feel guilty enough about it that I don’t fancy popping over to ask for Abe’s doctor’s contact details and so set about calling round the local surgeries.
Abe’s not registered with any of them.
A search of the flat unearths a cardboard box full of papers: bank statements and gas bills and salary slips. From these I get the name of the company he worked for – Sunnydale – and a number.
The call handler laughs in my face when I ask if the firm runs a healthcare scheme. I ask to speak to Abe’s boss and am put through to a very guarded woman who expresses dry condolences as if she’s asking the time of the next bus.
‘Was Abe happy in his work?’ I say.
‘I believe so.’
‘Because his fiancée has said that he felt overwhelmed by the workload, to the extent that it brought on depression. Did he mention to you he was struggling?’
There is a long pause, and when she speaks again her tone is even more careful. ‘Sunnydale treats staff and patient well-being as its highest priority. Abe made no complaints to us, either verbally or in writing, that he felt stressed or overworked. The caring profession is a challenging one, of course, but whenever he had cause to speak to us, it was with a specific, unexpected problem – turning up to find a client had had a fall, and having to cancel his next client to wait for an ambulance. That sort of thing.’
I stop myself from saying that I thought UK caring company policy for this sort of contingency was to leave them exactly where they landed.
‘I must tell you,’ I say, ‘that if we decide to pursue a court case for, let’s say, corporate manslaughter …’
She inhales.
‘… you will be required by law to reveal any correspondence you had with Abe. And there are, of course, ways of retrieving information that has been deleted.’
‘I …’ she stammers. ‘We … Sunnydale …’
‘Of course, if you can tell me categorically that Abe never gave you any cause to think he was struggling with his workload, then I’ll take you at your word.’
She knows full well that I won’t, of course, and I wait for her brain to whirr. Sure enough, she decides to tell the truth – at least, it sounds like the truth and I’m usually a pretty good judge.
‘I promise you,’ she says, more human now. ‘I’m his line manager and he never ever said to me that he was struggling. We would laugh about it sometimes, how crazy it was – I did his job until a couple of years ago – but I really think he liked it. Yes, I really do. Some of his clients were friends.’
I thank her and hang up, then go back to the box in the cupboard and sift through the papers. They don’t seem to be in any particular order. His mind was as chaotic as mine when it comes to non-work stuff.
Eventually I find a letter from a ‘John Hatfield Clinic’ in Camden.
Dear Mr Mackenzie
Your appointment is now booked as per the details below.
Please arrive ten minutes before the scheduled time. The test will take fifteen to twenty minutes. You do not need to fast beforehand.
The appointment date was three weeks ago. I sift through the remaining papers looking for the results, but there’s nothing.
The letter itself gives little away, just an address, a date, and a cc’d signature from a Dr Indoe.
So, Abe was having tests for something. Was it something serious?
Suddenly I think of the graveyard in our hometown. Full of Mackenzies who’d died young, in their fifties and sixties, some younger. The usual Scottish maladies of heart disease and cancer. At least two aunts died from breast cancer when I was in my teens, and an uncle from bowel cancer. Consequently I’ve always been paranoid, paying through the nose every year for the west coast’s best oncologist to check me over, then ignoring all his advice about cutting down on the booze and upping my fibre. I’ve been lucky so far, but what if Abe wasn’t? What if that was what the Christmas card was all about? Say he got cancer and has been keeping it from Jody to protect her.
Another wave of guilt crashes over me. He had no one to talk to. Could trying to deal with it alone have been enough to push him over the edge?
But this is just guesswork.
I think about calling Jody, but surely she would have told me if she knew. And if not me, then surely the doctors at the hospital.
At a loss, I call the number on the letterhead. There are several options but none of them allows me to speak to a real human being. I won’t be able to make an appointment without filling in wads of paperwork, so I end the call, put on my jacket and head out to the bus stop.
The clinic is in a characterless brick building a few minutes from the Tube station. Myriad signs on the way up the stairs tell me to sanitise my hands, to turn off my mobile, to call the Samaritans. I do the first two, then pass through the double doors into the fullest clinic I’ve ever seen.
The reception desk is manned by a harassed-looking West Indian woman whose neat bun is beginning to unravel, tight black curls pinging out at every angle. When it’s my turn I say I’d like to see Dr Indoe. She tells me Dr Indoe’s diary is full for the day and I should make an appointment online. I thank her, then while she’s distracted with the next person in the queue, slip around the corner to the seats at the end of a corridor of treatment rooms.
When the doctor comes out to call someone through I’ll nab her. It’s only a quick question after all: what was Abe being tested for and what were the results?
A well-preserved man in his fifties shuffles up to let me sit down. I thank him but he doesn’t give me a second glance.
Every twenty minutes or so a doctor emerges to summon someone. They’re dressed in normal clothes, with just an ID badge to distinguish them from the patients. After about forty minutes a short, curvy woman of around thirty emerges from a consulting room. She’s subtly made-up, her suit trousers and dark green blouse unobtrusively stylish. I wait until I can read her ID badge, then stand to block her path before she can call her patient.
For a moment her eyes are fixed on her paperwork and I wait for her to look up. When she does she gives a little start and tries to get past me. ‘Excuse me.’
I block her path. ‘My name is Mags Mackenzie. My brother was a patient of yours. Abraham.’
She frowns. Then I remember the photocard in the Oyster wallet. I get it out and show her, and have time to see recognition flash across her face before it’s replaced by a guarded blankness.
‘He had some tests recently,’ I say, slipping the card back into my pocket. ‘I’d like to know what they were for.’
‘That’s confidential, I’m afraid. I would be in breach of our code of ethics. I advise you to speak to your brother—’
‘My brother’s in a coma.’
The hubbub of the reception area dies away as people realise what’s happening. Dr Indoe’s eyes flick to the desk. The West Indian woman looks back at her.
‘He tried to kill himself, Dr Indoe.’ I decide to go on the attack, to try and intimidate her into telling me. ‘You had a duty of care towards him. Where was the counselling and the support? Where I come from that’s called medical negligence.’
&
nbsp; Her eyes never leave mine but she makes no attempt to answer me, and now I can hear footsteps echoing up the concrete stairs behind me. Shit. She’s called security. I’m running out of time.
‘Please,’ I say urgently as the doors bang open. ‘Please tell me what was wrong with him. Was it cancer?’
Her brow furrows for a moment, then she makes up her mind. ‘Look around you, Miss Mackenzie. Does this look like a cancer ward?’
I turn. I was so busy watching out for her arrival I didn’t pay any attention to my surroundings. Now I see the brightly painted walls are lined with posters. One says Keep Calm and Carry CONdoms. Another features a close-up of a woman’s knickers printed with the slogan, I’ve Got Gonorrhoea. A third depicts two men kissing and the line Time You Tested. The well-preserved man glares up at me from a copy of Heat.
I am in a sexual health clinic.
Two burly men stride across the room and position themselves, one on each side of me. ‘Time to leave, miss.’
I hold my ground, not taking my eyes from Dr Indoe’s face. ‘Please tell me. I’m his sister.’
They’re about to drag me away when she places a hand on one of their thick forearms. Then she comes very close to me, until I can smell the medicinal freshness of her breath. ‘Your brother asked for an HIV test,’ she says softly. ‘It was negative.’
I am escorted down the stairs and out of the building.
Back in the flat I sit at the table drinking coffee and working my way through a bar of supermarket chocolate I found in a cupboard.
Oh Abe, what have you been up to? Is it as simple and grubby as an affair? Or worse. Have you been visiting prostitutes? Mainlining drugs?
Fuck.
I thought he’d be OK. That he’d get out relatively unscathed, like me. If I’d known … If I’d known, then what? I’d have given up my shiny new life to come over here and drag him out of whatever shitty mire he’d got stuck into? No. No, I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t have expected him to do that for me.
But as I sit there, something niggles me.
When I was as low as I ever got – in the second year of university – my digs were as squalid as a crack house. I had no motivation or energy to keep the place clean. Rubbish stacked up, food rotted in the fridge. The floor was littered with empty booze bottles.
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